Australia Taps More Phones Than Entire U.S.

An anonymous reader writes "Last year Australian authorities tapped more phones all United States authorities combined. Australian phones were tapped at 20 times the rate of phones in the US according to this article in the Sydney Morning herald. The fact was revealed during a debate in the Australian parliament. The government is attempting to pass new legislation to to make it even easier for the country's domestic spy agency ASIO to tap phones." Update: 09/16 14:07 GMT by T : Julian Assange writes "The Australian is also running the story and has better stats." Thanks for the link.

Comments

Big deal

[Basje]

I live in the Netherlands (pop 15 million, about as much as NYC) and the police over here taps more phones than the whole of the US.

It's not as much the phone taps that are in place that worry me. It's the taps that should be there and that are prevented by corrupt officials.

Land of the free. Yeah sure, but only when you've bought your local politician/whatever.

Echelon...

[kinko]

Echelon makes this kind of irrelevant. The 5 countries that are part of Echelon (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ) can basically listen in on ANY phone call/fax/email/IP etc in any of the other countries. There are some computers here in New Zealand that are directly controlled by the US (NSA I think). This means that the NZ govt (and Aust govt etc) can listen to US phone calls. Now part of the reason it is set up like this is that the US authorities can use the NZ bit of the network to listen to US calls. This way it is technically not "domestic spying" as it is occurring over here.

I guess the wiretaps they're talking about here are for court-issued wiretaps for the police, rather than the secret services.

Re:Does Australia have a constitution?

[carlfish]

I really hope you were trolling. I'll bite anyway.

The Australian Constitution does not guarantee us any freedoms at all. If you read it, it's all about how power is divided between the State and Federal governments and the Governor General. There's no Bill of Rights, no guarantees of anything for the citizens save the right to vote in elections. Australian governments can pass any oppressive legislation they want.

We do have a pretty lame kind of freedom of speech, but you won't find it anywhere in the constitution. That's because the High Court invented it out of nowhere in the late 80's. It was an interesting case - the government of the day tried to pass a law restricting spending on political advertisements, the TV companies sued, and a one-judge majority in the High Court decided that we had a "freedom of political speech" implied in the constitution. In other words, "It's not there, but it should be so we'll pretend it is." The logic they used was tenuous to say the least.

Being a High Court decision, and a narrow majority, it could be overruled any time.

So there's no wonder we have more phone-taps than the USA. They have constitutional protection against unreasonable search, all we have is a Common Law doctrine of evidence that will mostly (but not always) suppress evidence that was illegally obtained.

Charles Miller

(Who isn't a lawyer, but did pass Constitutional Law before he dropped out of University to become a programmer)

About America...

[El Camino SS]

I know a lot of you out there think that your home countries are a lot safer, more interesting, etc.... and I agree. But you forget one thing about it. America is a real soup of people, and NOTHING COMES EASY IN AMERICA.

That is the nature of the soup that is the good 'ol USA. Most of the people that are from Finland and Norway say that there are no tensions and no problems at all with others.. well, move to Minnesota or the Upper Penninsula in the USA and you will notice that there is less violence there too... on the count that there really are less ethnic-religious-governmental-general-people tensions. Its the land of happy, slightly overweight hockey playing white guys. Lots of cheese.

I mean honestly, what the hell is there to argue about in Finland? Do you have a thousand cabbies that come from every country in the world and can't understand you, nor you understand them when they speak? Do you have hundreds of religious groups pining for their big piece of the political pie? Do you have anything that might get you annoyed like that? Unregistered illegal Mexican drivers that ran over kids in a schoolyard and then get no punishment because they are not US citizens, and caused all of this becasue they can't be bothered to read and understand English road signs?

WHY DOES AMERICA HAVE ALL OF THESE PROBLEMS? Because when poor, uneducated, huddled masses think of travelling to a land of prosperity they don't look around their straw hut and say, "Let's go to Iceland!"

Don't get me wrong. That's a good thing about being an American. But also you don't get this: when a Mexican punk drug dealer shoots a Texas cop on a sting in front of police, you also don't get an international incident where Vincente Fox shows his ass as a "show of power" to the American people over a P.O.S. drug dealer. The last time I checked, the Netherlands hasn't sent troops anywhere to save people. SO the Netherlands hasn't drawn any heat for it either. Believe it or not, there are several places in the world where people are excited to see me because I am a representative of America. Not everyone will try to kidnap me.

America-bash away. I don't blame anyone for liking a home country where everyone basically acts and looks the same as you... sounds great. Never had that. Probably pretty nice.

WE ARE JUST DIFFERENT, WITH DIFFERENT PROBLEMS. NOT BETTER OR WORSE THAN ANYONE, JUST WITH DIFFERENT PROBLEMS. But you can't really blame the USA for going crazy every day. You'd be nuts too if you had this many people that can't agree.

And another thing. When everyone says we don't need an army it just makes me laugh. Well, that is because we are doing the job for you. Keep in mind that if anyone invaded Norway, Iceland, The Netherlands, Australia, beautiful New Zealand, or anywhere else civilized... we might have the jets in the air faster than you might have yours. Why?

NOT BECAUSE AMERICA WANTS TO BE MR. BADASS ALL THE TIME. Its actually simpler than that.

That is what true friends do for friends when they need help. We'd kick butt again for France or Germany (or the Netherlands) in a second if they needed it. Of course, the UK doesn't even need to ask. You get punched silly for even looking at the UK in front of the USA.

Re:Suspicious ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I agree with you, and I have posted opinions like this to Slashdot before. However, it's best just not to bother posting this type of stuff. You will just get insulted and called communist/ liberal/ socialist/ Eurotrash/ America-hater and whatever. Just don't post this kind of opinion. Lots of Americans just aren't tolerant of it. (Ironic isn't it? For people that go on about freedom of speech so much!)

Free speech != keeping your mouth shut when someone says something you disagree with. Quite the opposite.

That being said, as an American, I cringe at those comments you're talking about, because free speech also doesn't mean that you should shoot your mouth off without thinking every time someone presses your buttons. And anyone who uses words like "commie" or "eurotrash" in serious conversation is, by definition, not worth paying attention to.

Anyway ... It's true that now many European countries have just as much freedom as the US. But you've got to look at the historical background. At the time of the War of 1812 (when the lines "land of the free and home of the brave" were written) every other great power in the world was a monarchy (unles you want to argue that France under Napoleon was somehow less a monarchy than the rest of Europe under traditional dynasties; I wouldn't.) Ironically, the only other great power in the world that could lay claim to anything approaching the degree of freedom the US offered in those days was Britain, which was slowly approaching a de facto democracy even then. But the idea of the US as uniquely free was really quite accurate then, and it was burned into our national consciousness.

I'm the child and grandchild of immigrants, and I've lived outside the US for substantial periods of time; I know that we're not all there is to the world, and that there are many other places in the world that offer a very good life. I am also a veteran and a patriot; I love my country and hope that it will retain its historical role as a beacon of freedom in a world where too many are oppressed. That's why current trends, both in the US and throughout the free world, scare the shit out of me.